


Thirteen of Shadows

by threewalls



Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Alternate Professions, Alternate Universe, M/M, Tarot, Triple Drabble, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-29
Updated: 2011-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>Fifty-two pieces, laminated card-stock, and in total the only commission he's never been paid for.</cite></p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirteen of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phoebe_Zeitgeist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebe_Zeitgeist/gifts).



> Written for the "Give me the title of a story I've never written, and your feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will..." meme. This would be the drabble I wrote first, before expanding this universe into the story she wrote about. Phoebe's comment can be found below the story.

Watari moves the eight of shadows up onto the nine.

Fifty-two pieces, laminated card-stock, and in total the only commission he's never been paid for. Apart from that, it's a funny story. The client must have got his wires crossed somewhere, because Watari usually produces *business* cards, but he'd had the deposit to insist and the blue eyes to make Watari want to say "yes".

Watari had even bought a bottle of wine, for after the handover. But the client never showed, didn't answer his phone, hasn't contacted Watari since.

The cards probably wouldn't have meant as much to the client as they did to Watari, so clearly marked with his memories of that winter. He wasn't as good at human figures as he was with objects, so he'd chosen people that he'd sketched before for the court cards. He'd numbered them 11-13, because he's also a lot more familiar drawing men than women.

Spread out throughout his solitaire piles, there's the ex that finally started leaving Watari alone that winter; his best friend from high school, the one who promised to keep in touch; the cute sales assistant from the art supply store, who must have graduated in the spring, because Watari can't remember seeing him more recently; and the client, of course, whose card is the only 13 to still be in the waste pile, who came to design meeting after meeting over tea in Watari's home office, even though it must have been obvious that Watari's notebook was only filling up with sketches of his shoulders, his ears, his wrists. Watari keeps those sketchbooks in a box under his bed.

He turns over another card. He has to look twice, because there is a thirteen in the corner, but the rest of the field is black. Empty.

**Author's Note:**

> "Thirteen of Shadows"
> 
> The re-imagining of the Tarot was amazing and brilliant, and I want to steal the entire concept. And it's such an interesting and illuminating take on the characters: I'd never have thought of anything like it left to myself, and now not only do I see it, but I can see an entire world that it implies -- and I'd never have seen all that, either.


End file.
